Is integrated policing worth the cost?

Whistler likely to opt into IHIT program while Squamish chooses
user pay system

Whistler is
investigating whether or not to sign up for the services of the Provincial
Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) following last month’s murder
— the first in Whistler for many years.

“Staff is doing
some further evaluation of costs and what the opportunities and risks are,”
said Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed.

“Do we need to do
this, should we be doing it?”

Integrated policing
started about four years ago. The idea is to pool specialist officers and
technology and use these teams to solve major investigations. The cost of the
team is paid for by the province, and by the local governments that use it
based on a formula using crime statistics and population. It is subscribed to
by most places in the Lower Mainland Detachment, which stretches from Pemberton
to the US border and from the Sunshine Coast to the Coquihalla Summit.

Whistler has
provisionally put $100,000 in its budget for IHIT and the Emergency Response
Team (ERT), which often comes to Whistler to help police big events such as the
upcoming May long weekend. This year Whistler, which has a resident population
of 9,200 but swells to over 30,000 on weekends, will spend $2.9 million on
policing.

Melamed is also
concerned that this is a case of the provincial government downloading costs on
local government.

“The other question
to look at is, is this a further trend of downloading policing costs to the municipalities,”
he said.

“That is part of
the concern. Do we support this trend or is supporting the formation of these
new teams supporting a trend that is going to lead to incremental policing
costs down the road?”

But B.C.’s Minister
of Public Safety and Solicitor General, John Les, calls that concern, a “tired
old song.”

“The only
downloading that is occurring is Whistler downloading its costs onto its fellow
municipalities because the other municipalities are carrying the can when there
is a significant investigation somewhere like Whistler, if they are not
integrated with the rest.”

Les believes
integrated policing is the future of crime solving. It is more efficient, leads
to more cases being closed, and is cheaper in the long run as there is no need
to duplicate services in every detachment.